LAST-MINUTE GEMS

Two young jazz geniuses, live from Symphony Center

Anyone who wonders whether the future of jazz is in safe hands ought to take note of the remarkable double-bill playing Friday at Symphony Center.

Two of the most important--and promising--young artists touring today will lead ensembles that build on jazz tradition in deeply personal ways.

Though precious few musicians today play jazz persuasively on the violin, Regina Carter has proven a remarkable exception to the rule. For starters, Carter can swing robustly and improvise fluidly. In so doing, she transcends the aura of European classical music that still hovers around the concert fiddle.

For her ability to apply jazz techniques to an instrument that rarely benefits from them, Carter last year won a MacArthur Fellowship, or "genius award." Its $500,000 stipend will nurture a career that already was gathering momentum around the world.

Pianist Marcus Roberts hasn't received a MacArthur windfall, but he surely deserves it. Few jazz pianists can match his technique, tonal polish or erudition in the vast history of jazz piano. All of these assets, and others, come into play when Roberts approaches the keyboard, his playing informed by the ghosts of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Willie "The Lion" Smith, and many others.

Yet this is no nostalgia act. Roberts re-imagines the jazz languages of the past for the sensibilities of the present. The sleekness of his playing and the vitality of his ideas are utterly contemporary, making him a kind of link between the past and the future of jazz pianism.